New York show - Celebs celebrate.

31 May 1997

New York show - Celebs celebrate.

New York show - Celebs celebrate. Technically, best show so far - the places is heaving with celebrities and artist Roy Lichtenstein sees his plane crash for the first time. And Bjork DJs at the aftershow.

Big New York rock show number one. And a good time was had by all. From a technical point of view tonight's show was our best yet, despite the erratic and rather bizarre behavior of the periscope heads. The band certainly rose to the occasion - The Edge took the opportunity to find new, currently unexplored, areas of the stage. During the opening chords of I Will Follow he took off along the stage right runway with no warning, leaving a trail of scurrying cameramen in his wake. One way of finding out who's asleep. I learned later that Bono had not had the easiest of gigs, but really you wouldn't have known. Given that Roy Lichtenstein was in the audience, a nice touch was Bono's shouting "OK Roy, here it comes..." at the pause during Bullet the Blue Sky, just before the Lichtenstein plane crash sequence appeared on the screen.

The celebrity count was, of course, on a par with Las Vegas. The guest platform in front of the mix position was absolutely jammed with people. Run Wrake, who is our star animator, came over from England to see his work in place for the first time. The Supermodels were present in force for the first time on the tour, dancing and having a great time as is their norm, which always makes for a good vibey gig - at least from where I'm sitting.

After the show everyone went off to find the disco tent, hidden somewhere in the backstage parking lot. It turned out to be easy enough to find (follow the bass sound) and was the scene of much partying into the wee small hours.. The band, being the devil-may-care wild rockers that they are rushed off to do a German TV interview right after the show, but did join us later. Highlight of the aftershow night was the arrival of Howie B and Bjork to do a joint DJ-ing session at the turntables in the party tent. As Howie himself would say... "wicked".

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